About this artwork
This dramatically lit, ominous photograph was taken a year before Mapplethorpe died. In the late 1980s he explored a number of Memento Mori subjects, including skulls and fragments of Classical statuary to explore the fragile line between life and death. This image invokes a certain fear and trepidation mixed with fascination for the living creature so suggestive of danger.
Updated before 2020
see media-
artist:Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 - 1989) American
-
title:Tarantula
-
date created:1988; printed 2005
-
materials:Gelatin silver print on paper
-
measurements:48.80 x 48.20 cm (framed: 74.50 x 62.00 cm)
-
object type:
-
credit line:ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2014
-
accession number:AL00366
-
gallery:
-
subject:
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? Tell us what you think.
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
The American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe became famous, not to say, notorious, in the 1970s and 1980s for his photographs of the male nude and sexually explicit, gay imagery. Although often considered controversial, Mapplethorpe tested the right to individual freedom of expression. These...
